


When the Long Long Future Years Run Slow

by alea_archivist (the_aleator)



Series: A Mere Appendix [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Friendship, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon, Tragedy, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22778611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_aleator/pseuds/alea_archivist
Summary: Johnny has come marching home again, but Lestrade hardly knows the man who returns.
Relationships: Lestrade & John Watson
Series: A Mere Appendix [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1636375
Kudos: 11
Collections: Watson's Woes JWP Entries: 2013





	When the Long Long Future Years Run Slow

The invading tendrils of the sun do battle with Watson’s face, till at last he opens one unfocused eye and says

“Time, Lieutenant?” in a voice reminiscent of his old self.

“Good afternoon, Doctor.” Lestrade says tiredly, and watches Watson slump back into his pillows.

“Lestrade.” It is guarded, and Lestrade, God help him, looks for some sign of the man he had once known. They call it shell shock, the way his hands shake and his words falter, how his gaze falls into oblivious reverie and his mind confuses past and present. But Lestrade knows different, for he has seen it all before.

“How are you?” It is a familiar ritual, one that settles the little man’s nerves. Watson scowls weakly and plucks at his linen.

“Where am I?”

“At Mr. Holmes’ residence.” Lestrade explains patiently, and then clarifies for the brief glimpse of hope on Watson’s face. “Mycroft Holmes. He has been taking care of you.” The little man tries to maintain the same even tone he would for a child, but something of his exasperation must peek through.

“Where is Holmes?” Watson says peevishly, a cross expression on his aging face. “I need him.”

“He isn’t here, Dr. Watson.” Lestrade explains again. “He cannot come.”

“Why not?” Watson growls, and Lestrade reads more than a hint of betrayal in the downturned lips. “He said that he should come.” More softly. “He said that he should always come.”

Lestrade steels himself, as Watson glares intently, turning on Lestrade as if he had been a liar.

“He cannot.” Lestrade says softly, to the confusion present on the doctor’s face and feeling every one of his three score years and fifteen. A deep frown cuts its way across Watson’s wrinkles, and he repeats, almost vehemently

“Cannot?”

“Yes – I am afraid so – John.” Lestrade replies, pulling at his watch chain helplessly as he watches the pieces of hope shatter in Watson’s face.

As if he were a little child afraid of the dark, Watson’s eyelids fly shut, and he squeezes them tightly, as if he will not betray the tears that gather beneath them.

Lestrade sighs. He remembers the proud, figure of a man who had gone off to war and the contrast with the man that memory swallows is too much for his heart to bear. He should never had said that the doctor was a weak man, but much of him has been lost, as if age and trials and grief have scraped him away until his will and virtue and mind are little more than pilings hiding under the sand of a long deserted beach.

The sun battles with those eyelids, but he lays as stiff as a corpse in the bed. Lestrade knows from hard won experience that Watson will not open his eyes until the next morning light.

He rises stiffly from the armchair, and of long custom, sees himself to the driver that Mr. Mycroft Holmes has kindly allowed him to use to return to the train station.

They have driven only a few hundred yards from the ancestral manor of the Holmes family, when Lestrade signals the driver to halt and descends from the car.

He climbs the grassy knoll slowly, for the white in his hair has begun to catch up to his feet, and doffs his hat at the top, under the branches of an ancient yew. A tree of the dead is a more than fitting match for such a man, he supposes.

“Hello, Mr. Holmes.” He says, addressing the nondescript tombstone with the ease of an old friend. “Dr. Watson still misses you dreadfully.” He smiles sadly at that, and the lines in his face are equal parts old joy and new grief. “As do I, you know.” He admits softly, watching the fading sunlight cascade up the white marble in a hue of red, gold and purple. He is silent a moment, mind still trapped in a triangle of sorrow, slender fingers drumming on his hat brim.

“It isn’t fair.” He murmurs abruptly, in a rare moment of self-pity. “That I am here, when all that John wants is you, Mr. Holmes. I always knew that I wasn’t his friend the way you were, but I never thought…” He pauses, as if even now Holmes could chasten him for his inadequacies. “I never thought I should be entirely without use.” His sable eyes turn inward for a moment, as he laughs somewhat bitterly. “But I’ve never had a fair lot, not with you and the Doctor involved.” He says ruefully, as he puts on his hat. “But then again, it seems to me, Mr. Holmes, that you’ve gotten the better part than either of us.”

He turns to go, as the fingers of the sun crawl past the gravestone and strangle up his legs in the sullen, sulky sun of late afternoon. He stops, and turns back to address the headstone again.

“Forgive my weakness for saying it, but I cannot help but think it should have been better if he had died in the War.”

After all, it had been Watson’s return that had reduced him to a lesser man, with the unexpected news of Holmes’ death, lost somewhere in the post on the Continent. Lestrade had met him at the station, as he had so many years ago, and watched those blue eyes fade to a tired gray in the sunlight, as they had done once before.

“But you cannot come back this time, can you?” And that light shall never return either, Lestrade knows with weariness down to his inward twisting left foot. Certainly he cannot put it there, even if Watson should let him.

With a swiftness and agility he had thought gone to his age, Lestrade knelt and puts his face but an inch from the gravestone, as if to protect his whispered words from the wind.

“But if wishes were horses, Mr. Holmes, then dead men would live.”

**Author's Note:**

> For the JWP#6 prompt in 2013 - Wilfred Owen's poem 'Futility'. The title refers to Vera Brittain's 'May Morning' from "Verses from a V.A.D.".


End file.
